25 Change

The Premise and Change

One of the most challenging aspects of managing people is helping them through change—in their job, throughout an organization, or just with a project. By understanding how people reach conclusions, we can explain why people are uncomfortable with change and suggest ways to help people through change.

In order to explain the thinking that takes place during change, we have to look at the premise that forms our conclusions. Remember the premise components and how they work: facts, observations, and experiences are combined to form assumptions, which are filtered by beliefs, until you come to a conclusion. The stronger the premise, the more confident you can be in the conclusion; the weaker the premise, the less confidence you'll have. In the context of change, the conclusion is what to do—the actions that you or someone else should take. If you don't have confidence in this, you'll be uneasy about taking those actions.

As you'll see in the examples that follow, you often lack experience when change occurs—experience in that new venture, process, or manager. When your experience diminishes, your premise weakens—and as we have seen, a weaker premise means less confidence in the conclusion. You're not sure about what to do or say or how to act. As a result, you feel uncomfortable with the change.

By way of example, let's say there is an organizational change taking place. You have a new manager, and your responsibilities are changing somewhat. What part of the premise has changed? Facts are still facts, because they are absolute and cannot change. Observations—what you read or have been told—could change a bit. But most of the change will be your experiences. You don't have any history with this new manager, or familiarity with your new job responsibilities. Perhaps you don't have knowledge of the applications you'll use in that new job. If you're in a new group, you don't have experience with the other members and their group dynamics.

You have less experience in the new environment than you had in the old environment, which causes your premise, supporting what you should do, to weaken. We tend to put great weight on our experiences, so when we have less experience, the premise weakens much. You're not sure what to do next. You no longer have confidence in your conclusions about what to say to your new manager or what might be expected of you with new responsibilities. You're not sure how to do things or what people look upon positively from newcomers. You are very uneasy about the change; it's that simple. That's why we don't like change; our premise generally becomes weaker, and we have less confidence that we know what to do.

As another example, let's say there's a change in a process you used in your job. You may have been able to follow the old process with your eyes closed, but you have no experience with this new one. You did undergo some training, but there's a lot to remember and apply. You're slower when you start implementing the new process; you have to refer to documentation frequently and aren't sure of the outcome or whether you're doing it right. You aren't familiar with the new process, so your premise that supports your conclusions about what choices to make and how to follow the process is weak. As a result, your confidence in implementing the process correctly is low. You don't like the change to the new process.

Our ability to predict significantly affects our attitude toward change. We have high confidence in the outcome of recurring events because we have a lot of experience and a strong premise. That's just another way of saying that we're better able to predict what will happen in these situations. If you obtained a certain result the last one hundred times you executed five steps of a process, then you naturally assume that the same result will occur if you execute those five steps again; that's just good old inductive reasoning. Now we take away the experience, and give you a new system. You have no way to predict the outcome anymore—which is extremely unsettling.

Helping People Accept Change

How do you help people, or yourself, through change? Some managers simply advise employees to get over it. Unfortunately, that approach doesn't accomplish anything. If you want to help people accommodate change, you have to help them increase their premise's strength, thereby yielding confident conclusions. You're really helping instill confidence that people know what they're doing. One way to do that is to give them time to gain experience. However, that approach requires patience—and assumes that you have the time to do this. Most organizations and managers don't want to wait long enough for people to acclimate, so what else can you do? You can present additional facts (if available), but most of the time, the place to focus is on observations and assumptions.

Here's an example: your company has just rolled out a new computer application system that employees have to use. They have no experience with this new system, so their premises supporting what to do are weak. They were pros, but now they are novices concerned about making too many mistakes, especially when they used to be experts. One way to help these former-experts-turned-beginners would be to connect them with someone experienced with the new system, sometimes called a subject matter expert (SME). The SME uses his or her experience to tell the novice what to do (observations), thereby strengthening the novice's premise with these additional observations. As the novice performs these observations, he or she also starts to gain experiences. At the same time, the SME listens to the novice explain how to do something: “I think I should do it like this.” The SME says, “That's right; that's exactly how you should do it.” In this way, the novice's assumptions have been validated—and increased observations and validated assumptions yield a stronger premise. The premise becomes stronger, and novices' confidence in their conclusions goes up. They know what to do, how to do it, and, as a result, overcome their aversion to the change.

Getting Started with Change

Following are a few examples of when you might want to prepare for change by understanding what has changed and thinking about how to reinforce the premises to help people through change:

• Process changes: When you have to learn or teach entirely new procedures, or just a different order of steps, look for training opportunities to provide some basic experience and observations. Most important, ensure that a very well-trained individual can act as the SME resource, readily available for others who have to learn. SMEs will be able to offer their experiences and validate assumptions.
• Organization-wide changes: This is one of the most difficult changes for people. Not only might there be a new manager, and new responsibilities, but they also no longer have a clear picture of their job progression—and they can't predict what's going to change about their future. You can address their worry by being extremely clear regarding the change, new roles and responsibilities, and whether—or how—it affects people's jobs. Too often, organizational changes come first—then everyone scrambles to figure out what the communication messages should be. Plan ahead so that you can give people the information (observations) they need to be content with—or at least, to figure out—their futures.
• Changes for customers: Think about the change your customers will experience when you introduce a new product or service or eliminate an existing one. Ask so what about this modification to uncover how your customers are going to react. What's your reaction when a product you use changes or is not available, and you have to use something else? You make a few errors, things take longer, or the outcome isn't as good. You'll think how the old product was just great, and you have no experience with the new one. Although the change might be worth the effort to learn, it's still unpleasant. How are you going to communicate the change to your customers—and help them get over it?

  Here are two general ways to help yourself and others adjust to change:

• Realize that change is good. It means you'll be learning new experiences to add to your premises. Your knowledge increases, and you become smarter, able to use your intelligence in a better way. That's a good thing, so ask yourself, How am I going to leverage this new opportunity? For instance, you're asked to move into a new position to help out another group. It's in an area that you're not that familiar with. Although the change will be tough, you'll learn a completely new set of skills that you'll be able to leverage your whole career. The change is good!
• Acknowledge change. If you change something, acknowledge you have just clobbered others' premises. Understand they will be uneasy about what to do next. Acknowledge that you know they have little experience with the new system or process, so now they may not have as much confidence in what to do. That's okay.